I'd argue that there's other causes of spending. Education, health care, etc. If you consistently earn more but have less total wealth that to me reeks of the

I'd argue that there's other causes of spending. Education, health care, etc. If you consistently earn more but have less total wealth that to me reeks of the broken window fallacy. There's spending that could be done via more efficient means. eg. Australia spends less tax on healthcare per capita. America spends more tax and then on top of that essentially has a private insurance requirement as well. That's spending that doesn't need to happen but does due to inefficiencies. You could get rid of this but apparently efficiency created by government intervention is socialism (it's not but the USA political system is a mess and people have been swayed).